Two Dissertations · §436 · John Davenant

Cap. VI: Remonstrants claim grace-only, but foresight faith still makes dignity the discriminator

I am not unaware that Remonstrants everywhere claim the election they defend rests on God's grace and mercy alone, not on any human merits or dignity. But when they revoke the whole elect/those not chosen discrimination to foresight of faith and unbelief, that discrimination an worth and unworthiness... Peter's faith and perseverance have a certain moral dignity; Judas's unbelief and obstinacy a moral undignity. It shines the more because Peter's faith and perseverance are not supposed prepared by some special divine good pleasure or gifted by special munificence — only offered in a sufficient administration of means, as also to those who remained unbelieving — and acquired and kept by Peter through good use of free choice; whence his election followed.

Latin

Neque tamen me latet Remonstrantes passim obtendere, electionem quam ipsi propugnant inniti sola gratia et misericordia Dei, non ullis meritis aut dignitate hominum. Verum cum totum discrimen electorum et non-electorum revocent ad praevisam fidem et infidelitatem eorundem, manifestum est id discriminis ad dignitatem et indignitatem hominum revocari. Nam fides Petri et perseverantia in fide habet in se moralem quandam dignitatem; sicuti incredulitas Judae et obstinatio in eadem, moralem indignitatem. Quod eo magis elucet, quia haec ipsa fides et perseverantia Petri non illi praeparata ex speciali aliquo Dei beneplacito, aut donata ex speciali aliqua munificentia, supponitur, sed oblata tantum in sufficienti mediorum administratione, sicuti etiam fuit illis qui increduli manserunt, a Petro autem per bonum usum liberi sui arbitrii acquisita et retenta; unde Petri electio est consecuta.

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John Davenant argues from Scripture that Christ's death is a remedy offered to every person, so that anyone who hears the Gospel may be called to believe, and then opens a second dissertation on predestination.

John Davenant (1572–1641) was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, bishop of Salisbury from 1621, and England's leading delegate to the Synod of Dort. A Reformed theologian of the moderate school, he defended universal atonement language within a Calvinist frame.

The Two Dissertations (1650) press two theses: that Christ died sufficiently for all, and that God sincerely calls all who hear the gospel — against the novel claim that Christ died only for the elect in every sense. They are Davenant's mature statement of the hypothetical-universalist position that divided English Calvinists.

This volume covers the opening of the first dissertation through the close of chapter 3, with the theses on the extent of Christ's death.

Date1572–1641 AD (Bishop of Salisbury; 1650 Cambridge imprint)

The 1683 reprint was not used as base text. No modern English was copied.

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